‘Guinea Pig’ Money Laundering Case May Decide Bitcoin’s Legal StatusIs it possible to be laundering money with Bitcoin if it’s not legally considered money? A court case in Florida may be about to give us an answer.
The by-now infamous case concerns Michel Espinoza, a young computer programmer and early bitcoin trader arrested in January 2014, and later charged with dealing in currency without a money transmitter license and attempted money-laundering.
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https://news.bitcoin.com/laundering-case-bitcoin-legal-status/ Wow. My attorney told me that the defense that "Bitcoin is not money" had little or no legal merit. We had planned to try it anyway if my case had gone to trial. However, since the criminal charges against me and the separate civil charges against all all my property they seized were dropped and my case never went to trial we never got to try this argument.
It will be very interesting to see how the judge will rule. Normally they just rule "for the purposes of this trial we will consider Bitcoin [money or a security or property (circle one)] and not try to define what it actually is" and they do not bother to decide the broader definition.